Via a thought-provoking Metafilter item:
The only way to save journalism is to develop a new model that finds profit in truth, vigilance, and social responsibility.
The old model was beautifully simple. A newspaper publisher in a
monopoly market in the twentieth century was like those counts of Savoy
who built a castle on the rock of Chillon between the foot of a
mountain and the edge of Ltke Geneva. Travelers could swim the lake or
climb the mountain, or they could pay a toll to the occupants of the
castle. That arrangement kept the Savoys and their heirs rich and
comfortable for three centuries.Today, the castle is a museum. Technology has created other ways to
cross the lake and the mountain. And so it is with publishers. They
still own the channel along which information is passed between local
retailers and their customers, but it’s no longer exclusive. — Philip Meyer Columbia Journalism Review (2004)
I took some students on a field trip to the Newseum earlier this year.
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/EL200/2008/09/newseum_field_trip/
I’ll definitely go back, taking another group of students. It was well worth the trip.
While I’m a grad student and not a journalist, the lessons learned given later in the article made a lot of sense to me. While print newspapers sadly seem to be disappearing, new media journalism seems to be burgeoning. I still follow my local paper online when I’m not home; they have added quite a number of blogs in recent years. I think the credibility and accuracy issues are paramount. The press sometimes seems to get those principles wrong in pursuit of the latest story. I encourage anyone who is able to visit the Newseum in Washington D.C as I did recently. It provides a fascinating perspective on how media and American society are historically intertwined; it’s a fundamental Constitutional right we should cherish and work to protect through responsible and accurate speech- http://www.newseum.org/ The points from the Columbia article follow:
* Credibility counts. Newspapers that are trusted by their communities do better than those that are less trusted. Credibility also correlates with higher advertising rates,
* Accuracy helps. Newspapers with low rates of reporter error are more trusted.
* Ease of use matters. Papers that are easy to read tended to have higher penetration.
* Staffing is important, Well-staffed newspapers resist the penetration decline measurably better than those that are thinly staffed.